


Ramble On

by rockmusicplays



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Background Character Death, Existential Dread, M/M, Mark of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-23 05:35:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12499932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockmusicplays/pseuds/rockmusicplays
Summary: Immortality is not a gift.





	Ramble On

**Author's Note:**

> What's this? Two stories in two days AND NEITHER OF THEM ARE WHAT I SHOULD ACTUALLY BE DOING? What a shock. *sigh*
> 
> Yet another old half-written story I randomly decided to finish.
> 
> Unbeta'd.

The stones had been Sam's idea. Dean had argued against it, calling it sentimental bullshit. Cas sided with Sam on the matter, and that was the end of the discussion. 

Truth be told, it mostly wound up being the angel's doing in the end. He was the one who went out searching the woods for the perfect hunks of rock, and each one was engraved with Cas' neat writing. Nothing fancy, just names and dates. The markers sat in a loose semi-circle, in a clearing about half a mile into the woods behind the bunker.

It wasn't until years later that Dean admitted to himself that he knew exactly why Sam had wanted that morbid little rock garden. After Abbadon, Dean had made a promise. No matter what the circumstances, the next time he lost Sam would be the last. There would be no more deals or do-overs. Seeing Sam bent over a file from the Men of Letters archives, hair shot through with grey, the reality of Dean's situation hit him full for the first time. He was going to watch his baby brother grow old and die, and there was nothing Dean could do to stop it.

Honoring the deal he'd made with Cain meant that Dean would bear The Mark for the rest of eternity. He would never age, never get sick, and never die. There wasn't a being left in all of Creation that had the power to do him in, so short of passing the curse on to some poor schmuck, Dean was screwed. He was immortal.

Lucky for him, so was his best friend. Cas has been pissed when he found out, but the guy never could stay mad at Dean for long. A few weeks of unanswered texts and ignored phone calls, and a tense first night back at the bunker was all it took for Cas to forgive him for continuing to suck at the whole look-before-you-leap thing. When it came right down to it, Cas had always stuck by him. Even if Dean didn't always deserve that kind of loyalty, he was grateful for it. Especially on a day like today.

Dean hovered at the tree line, watching as Cas used his angel blade to carve the newest addition. It should have been done weeks ago, but Dean had been stalling. When he finally brought it up, Cas suggested they head out to the west coast to find a stone. He wasn't in a rush either.

Now that they were here, Dean was having a hell of a time convincing himself to take those last few steps out into the clearing. This place had never bothered him all that much. Depending on what kind of mood he was in, it was actually sort of peaceful. It helped that he thought of it more as a wall of fallen heroes than a graveyard. There were no bodies here. A hunter's funeral didn't leave behind anything to bury. The problem was the last time there were three of them making the hike in from the bunker. And now...

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Dean dropped down on the grass in the middle of the stones and pulled his knees up to his chest. Starting with the far left, he said a silent hello to each one.

There had been a few arguments about who ended up out here. The sad truth of it was that the Winchesters could fill an entire mountainside with the names of all the friends they'd lost over the years. Cas had flat out refused to have any of his family included. Considering that any of them that weren't complete douche bags either died because of Cas or were killed by him, Dean couldn't blame him.

So as was the usual, Dean greeted Jo first. Ellen was next, then Rufus. That had been more for Bobby's sake than theirs. Dean had a soft spot for the old grouch and was glad Sam didn't fight him on that one. As for Bobby, he found himself stuck between Rufus and John. Even now the thought of what he'd have to say to that was enough to make Dean smile. _'The hell did I ever do to deserve eternity stuck between those two sons a' bitches?'_

Mary was to John's left. Hers was the only stone to get any sort of decoration. The words _This Angel Still Watches_ were written in Enochian along the bottom. It struck Dean as an odd choice for an epitaph, until Cas told him it wasn't meant as one. It was a thank you and a promise. 

Sam was at her side in the space they'd saved for him. Died in his sleep six years ago at an impressive eighty-seven years old. Dean had told him once that all hunters ended bloody or sad, and it was worth the agony of facing down eternity without Sam for his brother to have been the exception.

Then came Adam. The cease-fire Dean had negotiated with Crowley hinged on the King of Hell getting whatever was left of Adam's soul out of the cage and sending it upstairs. Turned out Michael had done a decent job of protecting his former vessel from the worst of the horrors, leaving Adam in shockingly good condition considering how long he'd been stuck for. Sam must have gotten one hell of an earful from the kid when he got through the pearly gates.

Kevin was last. They'd lost him sooner than they should have, no thanks to Dean. Of all the mistakes he'd made in his almost one hundred years, that was the one he knew he'd never really be able to forgive himself for. The mess with Gadreel had not been one of Dean's finer moments, and the fact that Sam was able to move past what Dean had done was nothing short of miraculous.

If nothing else, that particular fuck up finally had Dean learning from his mistakes. Powerful as he was these days, Dean had to accept that some things were still out of his control. Learning to take bad breaks as they came without burning everything to the ground trying to fix things that weren't his to fix was a slow, painful process. Especially when Charlie started hunting full-time.

She was as stubborn as she was smart, but unlike the Winchesters, she could admit when she'd screwed up or gotten in over her head. And she wasn't afraid to ask for help when she needed it. The four of them had spent a lot of years on the road together until Sam decided he'd had enough of motel rooms and long hours in the Impala. Then it was the three of them out working jobs while Sam held down the fort back in Kansas.

Bobby would have been proud of how well Sammy managed to fill the old grump's shoes. Any hunter who needed help tracking down a specific piece of lore or was looking for a local contact to help with a job knew to call Sam Winchester. Between Bobby's library, the Men of Letter's archive, their firsthand experience, and Cas' near-endless knowledge of all things angelic or archaic, the bunker had become Mission Control for hunters worldwide.

They'd kept its location secret from all but a handful of people, and Dean had been adamant early on that no one who didn't absolutely need to know about The Mark would have a clue about what Dean was. It took years for Sam to escape the stigma of being _the boy with the demon blood_ , so it went without saying that Dean's new title wouldn't go over well.

Jodi and Donna were the only ones outside of their little family who knew the truth, and they'd both taken it to their graves.

So had Charlie.

She'd stepped in to help Sam run things at the bunker almost twenty years ago, and just like Sam she'd kept at it right until the bitter end. About a month ago, she'd fallen asleep at her desk in the control room she'd been so damn proud of building and never woke up again. 

With Charlie gone, Dean and Cas were on their own. They still had friends in the hunting community, but out of necessity most of the newcomers were just names and an occasional voice on the phone. Dean had supposedly retired from the life years ago, and only Charlie and Sam ever knew where he'd ended up. No one had seen him in decades, and Cas was an increasingly rare sight around the bunker when Charlie's protégés were there.

Even Jason and Alec, who'd been with Charlie for years, had never met or spoken to Dean. They'd called Cas the morning they found Charlie, and there'd been no contact between them after Cas came to get her body. She got a hunter's sendoff in the clearing behind Rufus' old cabin, and now she had a stone of her own to mark her memory.

Dean watched Cas position the hunk of sun-bleached rock next to Kevin's marker, completing the half-moon shape Sam had started a lifetime ago.

"Guess that's everyone," Dean said quietly as Cas sat down in the grass beside him.

"I didn't think this would be so hard," said Cas, wrapping his arms around Dean's shoulders and pulling the old hunter against his chest.

"Neither did I," Dean replied, leaning into the angel's embrace.

Loving Cas and knowing that the angel loved him back was all that kept Dean going after Sam died. Realizing that if he didn't say something, he'd end up spending the rest of eternity with Cas without being able to spend it _with_ Cas, Dean worked up the nerve to fess up to his feelings for his best friend. Charlie's constant badgering might have had something to do with that decision, but Dean hadn't regretted it for a second. They'd made Rufus' cabin their home, setting up wards all around the property to protect the rogue angel and the Knight of Hell from everyone and everything.

Hunting lost a lot of its appeal when they stopped being able to buy gas for the Impala, and retrofitting her with an electric engine just felt wrong. She'd been parked at the cabin for the better part of ten years, one of the few pieces of Dean's past left in this world. There was a box of photos in their bedside table next to the amulet Cas had somehow tracked down for him, a box of cassette tapes in the linen closet, and a tablet full of music, videos, and more photos in a kitchen drawer.

That was all that was left of the Winchesters.

Knowing he would spend the rest of his infinite years as a fixed point in time was terrifying. So far, his mind seemed to be holding up as well as his body, keeping his memories intact. Keeping the ghosts of the names laid out around him alive.

Sam's laugh.

Charlie's less-than-coordinated dancing.

Bobby's voice echoing through the rows of rusted out cars while he pretended not to know exactly where Dean and Sam were hiding.

Dad humming along to the radio while Sam slept next to him in the backseat.

Little moments from lives well lived despite the odds stacked against them. Moments Dean would look back on centuries from now, when everything he'd ever known was long, long gone. Rusted and rotted away, crumbled to dust.

It was pitch dark and well past midnight when the Knight and the angel finally left the clearing, both pretending that this place would always be here for them to come back to. That the earth wouldn't swallow up each stone under a layer of moss. That the elements wouldn't wear each inscription smooth.

That the world wouldn't move on and forget there was ever a man with a leather jacket and an easy grin who once used to roam the country in an old black car, saving people, hunting things, and living his life as fast and as hard as he could because he'd always believed his days were numbered.

The man who'd always half-hoped he'd die young would watch the world die instead.


End file.
